Council tax rises get go-ahead

[Rovinghawk]

I see ever-increasing taxes & ever-decreasing services.

Where is the money going?

[funkyrobot]

Well, my MP claimed £188,000 in the last year from Jul 17 to Aug 18. My local council built a centre in town that made a loss of about £4 million when they sold it. That's a bit of where it goes.

[Earthdweller]

Lancashire are looking to save £77m by sacking childcare workers and switching off streetlights amongst other things

Yet, they’ve just spent £40m on bus lanes in East Lancs which are 24hrs 7 days a week

Buses don’t run after 7pm or on Sunday’s and the whole system had caused gridlock where previously there were no problems

Bafoons the lot of them

[BoRED S2upid]

I’m a firm believer that councils should be stripped of doing anything but clean the streets and collect the bins. They all seem incapable of doing anything else.

[Marlin45]

But what would all the consultants do then?!

[V8 Fettler]

Highest tax burden for nearly 50 years.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/highest_tax_burd...

There is a general lack of detailed info re: where does the money go?

[Previous]

V8 Fettler said:

Highest tax burden for nearly 50 years.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/highest_tax_burd...

There is a general lack of detailed info re: where does the money go?

Final salary pensions for former staff (?).

[menousername]

Been moaning to myself for years about how the area where I live has felt unsafe and ominous since they replaced the streetlights with those low-lighting LEDs. Naive I know- but always wondered why they cant negotiate the provision of streetlighting as condition of the licence for the energy companies to operate. I know I know - costs would be passed on. But much of my local area feels insafe and unwelcoming after dark and my general angst has been why cant local councils get their act together.

There is a sports centre I sometimes wak through to get gome from work. Feels incredibly unsafe and actually thought to myself how can anyone take their children here and feel safe - you would need to escort them to the door.l (car park is about 100 yards from the entrance)

Yesterday local news reported they needed help identifying a gang (of teens) that randomly glassed a passer by for now reason outside said sport centre before running off and disappearing into the night.

The victim luckily had minor injuries - and was treated at the local A&E - which is likely to be closed in the next year or two and “centralised” at another one.... 40 mins away

Same local councils have signed off something like 20,000 new build housing estates in the area. 20,000 more council tax receipts just in time to close the local A&E and turn the streetlights off entirely I guess

[Countdown]

V8 Fettler said:

Highest tax burden for nearly 50 years.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/highest_tax_burd...

There is a general lack of detailed info re: where does the money go?

Your Council will prepare detailed Annual Accounts. The info is all in there.

There will also be roughly 3/4 meeting of the Audit Committee each year at which the public can go and ask questions.

IIRC the Audit Commission Act also allows voters to go into the Council's offices and go through their invoices to see who the Council is paying. Councils also have to publish any items of expenditure over £500 on their website.

[Rovinghawk]

Previous said:

V8 Fettler said:

Highest tax burden for nearly 50 years.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/highest_tax_burd...

There is a general lack of detailed info re: where does the money go?

Final salary pensions for former staff (?).

"Old Fred's retiring next year- we should promote him so he gets a better pension."

I've seen examples of this & think it's corrupt.

[Saleen836]

Councils waste money every year just to spend the money they have, if they have a surplus of funds at the end of the financial year the money they receive from central government is reduced by whatever surplus they have!

[oyster]

Rovinghawk said:

Previous said:

V8 Fettler said:

Highest tax burden for nearly 50 years.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/highest_tax_burd...

There is a general lack of detailed info re: where does the money go?

Final salary pensions for former staff (?).

"Old Fred's retiring next year- we should promote him so he gets a better pension."

I've seen examples of this & think it's corrupt.

It is corrupt. I hope you've raised it with the council in question.

[Rovinghawk]

oyster said:

It is corrupt. I hope you've raised it with the council in question.

Amazingly, nobody's interested. Presumably they want the same when it's their turn.

[funkyrobot]

Saleen836 said:

Councils waste money every year just to spend the money they have, if they have a surplus of funds at the end of the financial year the money they receive from central government is reduced by whatever surplus they have!

Could never get my head around that when I witnessed it at the NHS.

[Countdown]

Rovinghawk said:

oyster said:

It is corrupt. I hope you've raised it with the council in question.

Amazingly, nobody's interested. Presumably they want the same when it's their turn.

Who did you raise it with? The Council is overseen by Councillors. They usually have an Overview & Scrutiny Committee and this type of occurrence would be exactly the thing that should be raised.

However given that LGPS is a CARE scheme now (and has been for a few years IIRC) it's irrelevant.

[anonymous-user]

I pay £225 per month, they collect the bins twice per month, recycling every week and it is £30 p.a. for a brown bin (I burn it / lob it in the woodland at the bottom of the garden).

My brother works for the local council, they are not at all stressed / over worked, earn decent money, get excellent benefits and offer limited VFM.

[Guvernator]

I've worked for a Local Authority. I can tell you where quite a bit of the money goes and it isn't on front-line services. I've worked for quite a few places in my 20+ year career with half of those as a contractor so have moved around A LOT. I can say without a doubt that the LA was the worst place I've worked in terms of inefficiency and wastage. If it was a public company, it wouldn't survive a year. Speaking to colleagues who have worked at other LA's and indeed central government, this isn't isolated to just one LA either.

I really have no idea why our government services are run so poorly, a lot of it is historical I guess. We could probably cut taxes drastically or at the very least not have a tax deficit if this was to change but there seems to be no will to do that at all, both internally or externally.

[Rovinghawk]

Guvernator said:

I can tell you where quite a bit of the money goes and it isn't on front-line services.

Please flesh this out with a few details.

[markcoznottz]

Rovinghawk said:

Guvernator said:

I can tell you where quite a bit of the money goes and it isn't on front-line services.

Please flesh this out with a few details.

Usual one is constantly moving staff/offices around.

[Guvernator]

Rovinghawk said:

Guvernator said:

I can tell you where quite a bit of the money goes and it isn't on front-line services.

Please flesh this out with a few details.

Just the usual really, incompetence, death by committee (just try to get anyone to agree to anything in a hurry) death by red tape, over-staffing. I was told it was pretty much impossible to fire anyone, the incompetent just get moved around from department to department. The LA I worked for could have taken a 30% staff cut without impacting anything as there were a large number of people who literally added nothing to proceedings, I'll give an example of one I saw first hand, one guys job was literally to run over to us whenever a service was down, that was it, no fault finding, no investigation, just run over to tell us and then go and sit back down, he was probably on around £40k a year and could have been replaced with an automated email alert.

Add to that Councillors having their own agenda, department heads having their own agenda basically think of the worst run place you can think of and multiply that by several factors. The whole thing was literally held together by a few people going above and beyond on a daily basis and the fact that their was no accountability or consequence for getting things wrong.

I used to hear stories from others about working for government and used to think they were just funny anecdotes and couldn't possibly be true. I was wrong.